Straight Life - Art Pepper [139]
When I came to, I crawled to the bars and hollered at the two bulls on the cells, "Please undo the handcuffs!" They're not supposed to put you in a cell with cuffs on. They wouldn't even answer me. I said, "You motherfuckers!" The guys in the other cell said, "Hey, putos gavachos, you motherfuckers! Why don't you help this guy?" They screamed at the bulls, but they wouldn't do anything.
This was in the afternoon. At about eleven o'clock that night two detectives came to the door. They said, "What is this?" The bulls on the cells said, "Well," and they started whispering. These were guys from downtown, from robbery detail. One of them took out his handcuff keys and undid me. I was cut. Blood was running down my wrists. My hands were swollen. There was no feeling in them. They said, "You won't try to get away, will you?" I said, "No, I can't do nothin'." They said, "We don't want to handcuff you." They put me in a car and drove me down to the Glass House, which is the jail downtown. They booked me in. They no sooner book me in than I'm dragged out of the cell, and here I am in an office with Sanchez. He put me through all kinds of shit again. He said, "You'll talk eventually."
They took me to the old county jail, and this booking in took eighteen to twenty hours. I get into the hype tank, and in the morning I'm vomiting bile, and all of a sudden here come all the dope fiends to the cell door and one of them throws a newspaper at me: "JAZZ MUSICIAN BUSTED. .. Art Pepper, renowned jazz saxophone player, was arrested by So-and-so at such-and-such place .... Pepper said he bought the heroin from Frank and Lupe Ortiz." Then I realized what Sanchez meant when he said, "You'll talk. We'll get you." They just put it in the paper that I had ratted on Frank and Lupe.
So now I'm laying there. I'm so sick I can't move. I've been in jail a lot of times. I've seen people killed. I've seen them beat to death, with thick blood running out of their ears and eyes, every bone broken. That was what was waiting for me. I looked at these guys. I said, "Man, there's nothing I can say. Sanchez told me he was going to get me. I didn't say a word. Didn't say nothing, and this is what he did. If you're going to kill me, kill me. I did not rat on them. I've never talked, ever." I laid there, and I thought I was dead. They went outside and had a conference. Then they came back. They said, "We're going to wait and find out from Frank for sure."
When Frank got busted they put him in the tank that I was in. Maybe they thought he would be so unthinking he'd believe the newspaper story and have me beat up real bad, and then, before I died, they thought I would cop out on him. But he came by the cell, and he said, "You didn't say anything, did you, Art?" I said, "No, you know that." I told him what had happened. He put the word out. "Don't let anything happen to Art Pepper." He was an intelligent guy, and we had a good friendship.
I testified for Frank at his trial. I said that when I went to his house I had the dope on me, that I had just stopped by his house to help him move, which I had done, and it helped Frank, and he straightened everything, and that saved my life. But to this day there are people who read that story in the papers who believe that Art Pepper is a rat. And there is nothing that ever happened to me that was more horrible.
When I went to testify for Frank, I went under cover; the narcs didn't know what was happening. Before they did know I was already in the courtroom in the custody of a deputy sheriff. When I came out, as I walked with the deputy, I told him, "I'm afraid. I'm afraid these detectives are going to kidnap me and kill me." He said, "Don't be silly. Nobody would try anything like that." We walked down the hall and around a corner. There's Solagi, Sanchez, and MacCarville. They're sort of lounging